Wendy Matthews shares live tapes for Support Act’s Roadies Fund

Wendy Matthews is the latest act to throw her support behind Support Act’s Roadies Fund, donating two live tapes from a pivotal time in her career as a multi-platinum solo artist.

The Desk Tape Series, created by the Australian Road Crew Association, raises funds to provide financial, health, counselling and wellbeing services for roadies and crew in crisis.

The live tapes are released on Black Box Records through MGM Distribution.

The first show was at the Mudgee RSL (NSW) in April 1991, a year after her debut album Émigré went platinum and won her ARIA Awards for best female singer and best newcomer (single).

Her hit singles included ‘Token Angels’ (inspired by a tragic school bus crash in Grafton, NSW), ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It’ and ‘Let’s Kiss (Like Angels Do)’.

It was one of the first shows her band did after just three weeks of rehearsals. Already they were red-hot, quickly adapting to Matthews’ mix of soulful ballads and funk-jazz slammers.

By the time of the second tape, recorded three years later at Bunnamah Estate in Margaret River (WA), she had international tours under her belt, and her stage confidence had soared.

The second album Lily, which reached #2 and was certified triple Platinum, yielded more hits as ‘The Day You Went Away’, ‘Friday’s Child’ and ‘If Only I Could’ and even led to her making her acting debut as a nightclub singer in the 1993 movie Flynn about actor Errol Flynn.

“It was a very prolific time for me, very creative and magical,” Matthews recalls from that era. “But it was a bit nerve-wracking because I wasn’t prepared, as a human being and as a dreamer.

“I was used to being in the back line, singing backing vocals as my chosen profession, and it took me a long time to feel more relaxed out in front.

I was still figuring who and what I was. But listening to it now, I seem to have had a strong idea of what I wanted to do musically and what I wanted to say.”

Matthews is currently writing her next album and is on the Apia Good Times national tour (May 13 to June 12) with Brian Cadd John Paul Young, Kate Ceberano and more.